If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

HTPC-upgrade advice: AMD Richland A8-7600 or Kaveri A10-6700T ???

So I want to upgrade my HTPC to a 45 Watt APU to be able to play some more games from the couch (low-end steamboxing ).
Since the A8-7600 is delayed I thought I could maybe go for the availabel A10-6700T.

What are your thoughts?

Note that I will not install catalyst (doesn´t work well with xbmc). So the 6700T would run r600 and the 7600 radeonSI (current stable mesa+kernel).

Given:
- very flat / small case so a dGPU or >45 W is out of the question
- 120 W power supply
- very silent and it should stay this way
- AMD E-350 (Zacate)
- 2x2 GB 1333 RAM
- 128 GB SSD + 3TB
- openSUSE tumbleweed

Given the current state of drivers, I would recommend the Richland for r600g. The hw perf difference is about a dozen %, but with current drivers you'll likely get better perf from the Richland, not to mention the driver quality.

HSA apps may appear in the future, but I doubt it gets any major adoption in the next few years.

Given the current state of drivers, I would recommend the Richland for r600g. The hw perf difference is about a dozen %, but with current drivers you'll likely get better perf from the Richland, not to mention the driver quality.

HSA apps may appear in the future, but I doubt it gets any major adoption in the next few years.

Thx for the input
I read now somewhere that the richland 6700T only supports DDR3 1600 mhz. That would be huge, wouldn´t it? Since the kaveri 7600 shall work with ddr3 2400 mhz. Can anyone confirm this?
And for r600 - are the more optimizations planned?
otherwise radeonsi might have the same level / quality in 6 months or so - correct?

Cpu-world says 1866MHz, but you might want to check AMD's site. There isn't anything planned for r600g as far as I know, and theoretically radeonsi could match it in six months, yes.

However, people also said that six months ago, and before that. If you recall, HD8000 was the first gen where launch-time open-source support was promised - it didn't exactly turn out that way, and the drivers only became stable/usable a year after launch. I'm pessimistic on that, and would not rely on it matching six months from now.

Cpu-world says 1866MHz, but you might want to check AMD's site. There isn't anything planned for r600g as far as I know, and theoretically radeonsi could match it in six months, yes.

However, people also said that six months ago, and before that. If you recall, HD8000 was the first gen where launch-time open-source support was promised - it didn't exactly turn out that way, and the drivers only became stable/usable a year after launch. I'm pessimistic on that, and would not rely on it matching six months from now.

Three questions remaining:
- If I would find 2133 ram similar priced to a 1866 ram with same timings I could at least try this with a supporting mainboard + 6700T?
- And when it does not work out I would just run the 2133 at 1866 mhz and go for optimizing the timings? (the I would think: I should have waited for 7600 kaveri)
- I would go for FM2+ and not for FM2 mainboard?

The 7850K is probably your best bet
You can undervolt and underclock a bit and it still retains almost all performance.
You should upgrade the ram though no matter what APU you go with.

I cannot go above 45W with my given case and PSU.
7850k was somewhere tested undervolted/clocked by a bios setting for 45W TDP. However it was then much slower than the 7600 (I believe cpu ran at 2,5 Ghz, gpu I do not remember).
Yes, I think the RAM will be upgraded, despite the tight budget.

A10-6700T can burn 80 watts gaming.
Not sure your old 120W PSU will be up to the task.
You can get a decent higher wattage power supply fairly cheap.

No idea what your budget is but upgrading into a 120W psu with the intention of gaming dosen't sound like a good idea. Especially when your ram will be a serious bottleneck for an APU.

thanks for the hint!!!
can you give a refference for this?
is 80 watts common or just a seldom peak in furmark, prime95 or battlefield (stuff I would not run).
in this case I maybe should upgrade to the new 28nm kabini athlon, as it is so cheap, while at the same time keeping the old RAM.
I definitely will not go for a new PSU and/or case. 120 W are the limit.
This will be a machine for LIGHT gaming (humble bundle stuff at 1080p and 30 fps) and XBMC movie time